For the second consecutive week Netflix original series Clickbait was the most watched show on the major U.S. subscription streaming services, attracting 1.108 billion viewing minutes during the week of Sept. 6-12, according to Nielsen.
While Clickbait’s viewership performance was down by 352 million minutes week over week, it seems audiences remained taken with the kidnapping-themed, eight-part limited series thriller, starring Entourage’s Adrian Grenier as a cheating family man held hostage. The series debuted on Netflix on Aug. 25—about three weeks before the current ratings phenomenon, Squid Game, showed up. (Nielsen’s weekly ratings snapshots reveal the U.S. SVOD audience scene as it existed around a month ago, not as it appears today. And the ratings are heavily weighted towards Netflix, which has tens of millions more domestic subscribers than Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus.)
The Season 6 premiere of Netflix’s Lucifer, meanwhile, generated 1.052 billion viewing minutes, putting the supernatural-themed original series in second place. The 10 new Lucifer episodes, which debuted on Sept. 10, resulted in a viewing surge of more than 500% week over week, according to Nielsen. The Netflix series centers on Tom Ellis as the titular fallen angel, who works with the LAPD to take down Earthly criminals.
Lucifer ran on FOX for three seasons before being canceled. Netflix brought the Warner Bros. TV series back to life for a fourth season in 2018. In May, when Netflix released the second leg of Lucifer’s Season 5, the show captured an impressive 1.284 billion viewing minutes. Yet despite recent ratings success, Season 6 of the Warner Bros.-produced 93-episode series marks its last.
For the first time in two weeks, Netflix off-net supernatural drama Manifest drew less than a billion viewing minutes. Taking the No. 3 spot, Manifest garnered 831 million viewing minutes during the week ending Sept. 12.
The third season of Manifest was released on Netflix on Aug. 21. Canceled by NBC in June, Manifest has been a ratings giant for Netflix. Netflix has agreed to produce a 20-episode fourth and final season of the series about the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of Flight 828.
For the first time since March, a documentary made Nielsen's top 10 list. Netflix’s Turning Point: 9/11 and the War On Terror drew 691 million viewing minutes. The five-part series, created and narrated by former U.S. Marine James LaPorta, debuted on the streaming service Sept. 1 and finished in fourth place overall.
Meanwhile, off-net series Criminal Minds, Grey’s Anatomy, Cocomelon and NCIS continued to perform reliably for Netflix, filling out the middle portion of the top 10 list.
Money Heist, the Spanish thriller that was an early local-language progenitor to Squid Game—and one of Netflix’s most globally successful shows of all time—finished in ninth place 538 million viewing minutes for the week ending Sept. 12. The show bowed its fifth season on Netflix back on Sept. 3.
Canadian family drama series Heartland, adapted from Lauren Brooke’s eponymous novels, grew its audience by 9% week over week to remain in Nielsen’s top 10. The 13th season of the multi-generational saga set in Alberta, produced by the CBC, debuted on Netflix back in February. With the 15th season set to unspool in the Great White North, Netflix viewers are still eagerly awaiting Season 14 on the streaming service.
Notably, Disney Plus’ Cruella—the live-action prequel to the Disney animated classic 101 Dalmatians—which had taken the No. 3 spot the previous two weeks, dropped out of the top 10.
Also notable: Hulu comedy Only Murders in the Building debuted the first three of its 10 first-season episodes on August 31 following decent promotion, with stars Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez seemingly appearing everywhere. But with the fourth episode debuting Sept. 7, Murders saw its audience decline by 20%.
Previous Weekly Rankings:
August 30 - Sept. 5: Netflix’s 'Clickbait' Steals Audience Traffic From 'Manifest'
August 23-29: Netflix’s 'Manifest' Soars Back to No. 1 with the Debut of Season 3
August 16-22: Netflix’s ’Outer Banks’ Loses 37% of Its Audience, Still Finishes No. 1
August 9-15: Netflix’s Scrappy ‘Outer Banks’ Maintains the No. 1 Spot
August 2-8: Netflix's ‘Outer Banks’ Surpasses 2.1 Billion Viewing Minutes
July 26 - August 1: Netflix's 'All American' Edges 'Outer Banks' for No. 1
July 19-25: Netflix’s ‘Virgin River’ Maintains the No. 1 Spot
July 12-18: Netflix’s ‘Virgin River’ Ends Five-Week ‘Manifest’ Winning Streak
June 28-July 4: Amazon’s $200 Million Bet on Paramount’s ‘The Tomorrow War’ Pays Off
June 21-27: ‘Manifest’ Continues Series Saving Flight Plan on Netflix
June 14-20: Netflix’s ‘Manifest’ Scores the Year’s Biggest SVOD Audience So Far
June 7-13: Netflix’s ‘Sweet Tooth’ Shows Bite for the Week of June 7-13
May 31-June 6: Netflix’s ‘Lucifer’ Bedevils SVOD’s Biggest Audience Since Season 3 of 'Cobra Kai’ Debuted in January
May 24-30: Netflix’s ‘Lucifer’ Has SVOD’s Biggest Week* Since ‘Coming 2 America’ Debuted in Early-March
May 17-23: Zack Snyder’s ‘Army of the Dead’ on Netflix Leads a Rather Lifeless Week for the U.S. Streaming Biz
May 3-9: Netflix’s $100 Million Bet on Sony’s ‘The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ Pays Off
April 26 - May 2: Netflix’s ‘Shadow and Bone’ Edges Hulu’s ‘Handmade’s Tale' in Rebound Week for the Streaming Biz
April 19-25: Netflix’s ‘NCIS’ Off-net Run Wins Another ‘Easttown and Down' Week for the U.S. SVOD Biz
April 12-18: Disney Plus’ ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Builds to 855 Million Streaming Minutes and a No. 1 Finish
April 5-11: Give Netflix's 'Thunder Force' Five for Winning the Week of April 5-11
March 29 - April 4: Netflix’s ‘The Irregulars’ Tops the Easter Week Charts
March 22-28: - 'Falcon and Winter Soldier' Tops SVOD Originals
March 15-21: - 'Grey's Anatomy' Re-Runs Top SVOD Ranker
March 8-14: - ‘The Crown’ Got Royal Gains from Meghan’s Big Oprah Interview
March 1-7: - Amazon Tops the Charts for the First Time with ‘Coming 2 America’
Feb 22-28: - Netflix’s 'Ginny & Georgia' Leads the SVOD Biz
